I have three great missions in this life - Rinpoche tells me, looking introspective. “First, as a human being. Second, as a teacher of Dharma. Third, as lama, holder of lineage“

My first mission, as a human being, at the age of thirteen, I offered my life to the service of all beings. In my experience of the world, I have therefore adopted an attitude of open-minded, trustful, and spontaneously welcoming attitude towards all those who cross my path through maturation of karma. Nobody I meet is foreign to me. In each one I find my brothers and sisters in humanity. As human beings, we all have within us the jewel of the awakened mind , which is our extraordinary potential for kindness and inner transformation.

At the basis of my teachings, there is the opening of the heart, and I endeavor to introduce my students into the mind’s spacious states , which encompass the universes and all living beings. Meditating on the opening of the heart concerns everyone, Buddhists as well as non-Buddhists, for it nurtures the fundamental human values ​​of love, benevolence, compassion, forgiveness, peace and reconciliation. Without an opening of the heart, our ethics remain unembodied and can very well veer toward intolerance. Taking the path of the heart always helps us recognize the potential for kindness and transformation that is a feature of our humanity. If we have developed unconditional love, we will recognize this loving base even in the cruelest among us, who act inhumanly because they ignore their true nature. Opening the heart makes us love beings so much that every day we renew our ever-keener longing to help them, so that they may find happiness and be delivered from suffering.

In my efforts to relieve the suffering of the world, I am particularly concerned about the fate of mothers who die while giving life. This happened with my sister when, at the age of twenty-six , she gave birth to my nephew. Just like her, for lack of means, many other mothers in remote areas of Tibet or in the Tibetan colonies in India, are not granted the care they need to survive childbirth, and so raise their children. It is a double misfortune, the misfortune of the mother and misfortune of the little ones, orphans. My first mission in this life is therefore to teach a code of ethics of the heart and to implement a humanitarian program that cares for future mothers and helps educate their children, in particular girls. It is essential that the most destitute girl should be able to access higher education and granted an equal status with men. "When a woman is educated, a people is educated, "such is a saying of traditional wisdom. Women are the key to evolution and to a better future for humanity".

As master of Dharma, I have a second mission. It also in the realm of suffering, not suffering on the relative level this time, but on an ultimate level, the very causes of suffering. The root cause of all our pains is fundamental ignorance. Our erroneous understanding of reality maintains destructive states of mind, such as hatred, attachment, desire, jealousy, and anger. These emotions carry on the cycle of suffering and make us turn our backs on happiness. My mission is therefore to unceasingly provide the teachings that deliver us from ignorance by conquering our inner enemies. Believing in adversity is a terrible illusion. The enemies that appear outside of us are the projection of our uncontrolled mind. When we have overcome all our inner demons, nothing affects us anymore.

The Buddha’s life , offers several examples of the perfectly mastered power of the mind. One day, out of jealousy, his cousin Devadatta launched against him one of the most ferocious elephants, thinking the animal would pierce him with his tusks or trample him . But as it approached the Awakened, the elephant knelt down. Then, on the night of Buddha’s Awakening, the demon of death, Mara, sent the anger of the winds against the great meditator. But though their fury could uproot trees, the winds did not crumpled a fold of his robe. Mara then called torrential rains, which racked the earth. They did not wet a single fiber of the Buddha’s clothes. And when, in the end, Mara ordered his troops to destroy the Awakened, the arrows became flowers at the touch of his body. The light radiating from him was like a shield protecting him, so that the swords were broken, and the axes were nicked. Such is the power of the mind when established in primordial peace. With my training, since my first years at Golok Monastery, and with the experience of my remarkable healing, I must now especially teach inner peace, which reveals the mind’s boundless power of healing . If possible, I want to encourage therapists and doctors to integrate the spiritual dimension of the human beings into their understanding of illness and care giving. This is my second mission as a teacher of Dharma, since my healing, to be complete, must be dedicated to the ultimate healing of all lives. I have vowed to heal in the name of all beings. This vow is been fulfilled, Sofia, with the testimony of this book . I have shared this life experience with you in order to help my readers better recognize the power of their own mind.

These words of Phakyab Rinpoche resonate like the call of a guru from the heart of compassion. They wrap us in a powerful vibration that reaches from era to era, en echoes through the memory of worlds, in this life and in all lives.

And at last, Rinpoche says, I have a third mission, as holder of a lineage. Acknowledge as the Eighth Phakyab Rinpoche by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, I must preserve a spiritual filiation and carry on the memory of my lineage, of these extraordinary teachers who made the offerings of all their lives to all beings before me. For I am the holder of the throne of Ashi Monastery, blessed by the heart relics of Je Tsongkhapa, which someTibetans saved from destruction by the Red Guards at the peril of their lives. In the past few years, thanks to the generosity of my students, I have been able to rebuild Je Tsongkhapa’s chapel, and soon I hope to be able to set up a patronage program to ensure sufficient amount of daily food for the monks of Ashi.